The Greeks in Bactria and India c10.s6.65

c10.s6.65

The early coins of Maues bear the simple legend 'Of King Maues'. It would be tempting to ascribe these early coins of his to the kingdom of 'Indo-Scythia' and to suppose that they were struck in Demetrias- Patala, which was still a Greek city in the third quarter of the first century B.C.¹ and, though there is no trace of a royal mint there, could doubtless have produced them; but this must be rejected, for Maues cannot have led the original inyasion from Sacastene (that might mean a reign of sixty years or more), and if his early coins belonged to ‘Indo-Scythia’ there should also be coins of his predecessor in rule, which do not exist. The early coins must be taken to be Maues’ first coins after he got control of the Taxila mint; as one shows the Apollo and tripod of Apollodotus,² another an exact copy of the elephant’s head of Demetrius,³ and a third the trotting horse which had first appeared on later imitations of the coins of Heliocles,⁴ they indicate a comprehensive claim on the part of Maues to all the Greek dominions west of the Jhelum. He was in possession of Taxila before but not long before c. 77 B.C. (App. 16); the conquest of Gandhāra cannot be put much before 70, as there are five kings to come in between Antialcidas and himself, or much after, as time is required for the subsequent events in the Paropamisadae (post). After the occupation of Taxila, but later than the Taxila copper-plate of c. 77 B.C., Maues took the title ‘Great King of Kings’ in imitation of Mithridates II; doubtless he was emphasising a claim to be as good a man as the king who had expelled his people from Parthia.